There's One Big Obstacle To US Development Of Thoriumhttp://www.businessinsider.com/how-natural-gas-is-crowding-out-thorium-2012-12/comments
en-usWed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 -0500Tue, 03 Mar 2015 19:11:49 -0500Lucas Kawahttp://www.businessinsider.com/c/50efb424eab8ea2906000012YSFri, 11 Jan 2013 01:41:40 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50efb424eab8ea2906000012
christopherseiss wrote:
"FTR reactors can require a small amount of uranium-233 to start up, but once started up they no longer require uranium (hey, easy way to dispose of old nuclear bombs!). "
That makes no sense. U233, U235, or plutonium is required to operate a thorium reactor. It is U235 or pu239, not u233 that would likely be used to "seed" the reactor - simply because there is minimal u233 around. After the reactor starts it will breed u233 to fuel the reactor. By extracting Pa-233 a country could produce enormous amounts of pure U233 for bombs.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d234596bb3f7a140000001Mike ConleyWed, 19 Dec 2012 16:40:41 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d234596bb3f7a140000001
Back to ya - if you're inclined to take Thorium seriously, then you should be aware that the ieer "fact" sheet has been thoroughly debunked:
<a href="http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/05/13/cannaras-rebuke-of-psrieer/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/05/13/cannaras-rebuke-of-psrieer/</a>
The technology is only "still experimental" because the stunningly successful MSRE (Molten Salt Reactor Experiment) program at Oak Ridge in the late 60s / early 70s was shut down by the Nixon Administration, in a political move to throw manufacturing jobs to Nixon's California friends, where the Fast Reactor was to be built - the molten salt reactor was to be built in Tennessee.
The first phase of MSR reactor technology is a single fluid reactor, not a "full breeder". Its waste profile will be a mere fraction of existing reactors, and it will even be able to consume the nuclear waste from existing reactors, resulting in a net negative of nuclear waste on this planet, while providing carbon-free electricity.
The second generation of MSR will be a full breeder, two-fluid reactor. It is estimated that a 1 GWe LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactor) will run on one ton of pure Thorium per years, which the reactor will breed into U-233, which would be the actual fuel.
The resulting waste per year is estimated to be about 1 teaspoon of Plutonium in a variety of non-explodable isotopes, along with about 1660 pounds of isotopes that will mellow out in 1-10 years, and about 340 lbs of moderately long-term waste that will mellow out in just 500 years. 340 lbs of nuclear waste is about the size of a bowling ball. I would think that a civilized society could find a place to safely stash a bowling ball each year for 500 years. Such a storage facility is well within the design capabilities of our current engineering.
Yes, in principle, Thorium reactor technology is nuke capable. And you can also use a locomotive to crack walnuts. But in either case, nobody would.
If anyone really wanted to make a nuke, there are far cheaper, faster, and less expensive ways of going about it. If you really want to make a bomb out of Thorium, you would irradiate Thorium in a college research reactor and make yourself some U-233 and make a plunger bomb out of it - if you could do it fast enough before you dropped dead from the gamma rays.
The technology to misuse Thorium to make a bomb has existed for decades, even with MSR/LFTR reactor technology on the shelf for all that time. And I haven't heard a big boom yet. So to warn that it will lead to proliferation is nonsense.
Nobody - but nobody - would even bother to use an MSR or a LFTR, even a two-fluid LFTR, to make a bomb. That would be turning the reactor into a Rube Goldberg device -- cracking walnuts with a locomotive. Even if MSR/LFTR technology were completely banned, and even if no thorium reactor was ever built, that wouldn't stop a terrorist from making a nuke from Thorium (see above.) Banning MSR/LFTR because a bomb could, in theory, be made with the technology would be as silly and as ill-informed as banning diesel fuel and soap flakes because some nut could use them to make napalm.
And as for the canard that it would render large parts of the globe uninhabitable. That's just straight-up balderdash. Are you talking about proliferation? We've had hundreds of nuke tests, a lot of them in Nevada. And Vegas looks pretty well populated and thriving to me. Are you talking about solid-fuel pressurized reactor meltdowns? Even after Chernobyl Europe is still populated, and no one - NO ONE - died at Fukushima from radiation. But 50 people did die in the panicked evacuation therefrom.
And anyway, you are conflating MSR/LFTR reactors with pressurized solid fuel reactors, that, yes, can spread volatile fission products downwind and downstream. But a liquid fuel reactor can't melt down -- how do you melt a liquid? And they operate under atmospheric pressure, not at 15 atmospheres, so they can't blow up, either. And if one should happen to spring a leak, the liquid fuel that spilled out would quickly turn to a solid, recoverable blob, like solidified molten lava. Yes, it would be highly radioactive. But imagine a spilled load of radioactive concrete. It might be nasty, but it is self-contained and recoverable. And in the case of spilled LFTR fuel, it would be re-usable as well. Just melt it down, filter out the dirt and gravel, and put it back into the repaired reactor.
So your canard about rendering large swathes of the globe uninhabitable -- from either liquid fuel reactors or from solid fuel reactors, or even from the regrettable nuclear testing that has already been done -- is fear-mongering nonsense backed up by nothing more than junk science from the likes of Helen Caldicott.
If you want to attack Thorium reactor technology, then take the time to study it first, and learn how different it is from conventional reactors. And even if it's only used to clean up the nuclear waste left behind by existing reactors, it would be a boon to mankind.
All the windmills and solar panels in the world won't be able to eradicate one single atom of nuclear waste. Much less produce carbon-free electricity out of it. MSR/LFTR technology can.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d22b75eab8ea7c1500000fMike ConleyWed, 19 Dec 2012 16:02:45 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d22b75eab8ea7c1500000f
Well, yeah, if you hit them hard enough with a big old chunk of the stuff.
You could sleep on a bed of pure Thorium your entire life, and the only way it would hurt you is if you fell out of bed.
But the dust can be a bad thing, so wear a dust mask, and don't get it in an open cut. Other than that, you're good to go.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d229b569beddc35e000014Alex CannaraWed, 19 Dec 2012 15:55:17 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d229b569beddc35e000014
This comment interface is very odd -- it puts me somewhere else from where I hit "Reply", but programmers aren't engineers, so what can we expect, eh?
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The key is not Thorium. Th provides us with cheap, abundant, low waste fission-fuel production. It's usefulness for "breeding" fission fuel (U233) was discovered by Nobellist Seaborg in the 1940s. It's great.
But, the key to safe, efficient nuclear power is liquid-salt fuel, whether using Th fluoride (LFTR), or Uranium/.Plutonium (possibly from waste) in Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) -- that comes from Nobellist Wigner, in the 1950s.
We ran MSRs on U233 & U235 in the '60s (Weinberg at ORNL) and were ready to move to LFTRs in the '70s, until Nixon and others interfered: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/73p7ler" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >http://tinyurl.com/73p7ler</a> "The First Nuclear Era" -- Weinberg.
There's no meltdown because fuel is melted. There's no power needed to shut down because of gravity drain to underground storage, where the 1969 shutdown MSR fuel still sits in TN. There''s no explosion, because there';s no pressure, no water, no steam, no Zirconium, etc. Just hot salt, of the most stable, thermally efficient kind.
www.thoriumremix.com/2011
Th is great, MSR is the key. The Chinese know this. Will we wise up?
--
Dr. A. Cannara
650-400-3071http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d20e916bb3f7c976000006Mike ConleyWed, 19 Dec 2012 13:59:29 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d20e916bb3f7c976000006
Three things that are almost never mentioned when people tout natural gas:
1) Btu for Btu, its CO2 emissions are still 50% of petroleum.
2) The real name of natural gas is methane, which is 25X more powerful of a greenhouse gas than CO2.
3) Any gas infrastructure will leak. A 2-3% leak, coupled with the burning of that methane which doesn't leak, natural gas will be as much of a global warming problem as traditional fossil fuel.
As for Thorium:
There is thousands of years of proven supply on this planet. In fact, the current US production of electricity can be generated for 400 years with the Thorium that we have already dug out of the ground.
The only CO2 emissions will come from further extraction (which can be eliminated using Thorium power plant electricity) and from whatever concrete and steel production needed to construct the plants.
In the long run - if we are so lucky as to HAVE a long run - Thorium has the potential to actually eliminate and reverse the CO2 loading of the atmosphere. That's because CO2 can be extracted from the air and safely sequestered, but it takes lots of electricity to do it. Thorium can provide the electricity to do this, while also powering the planet, and do both without producing more C02 in the process.
To be horribly blunt about it - Natural gas is just a cheaper, slower way for planet Earth to die.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d20cf4eab8ea5b4d000009christophersiessWed, 19 Dec 2012 13:52:36 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d20cf4eab8ea5b4d000009
- True, they are still testing the facilities managed.
- LFTR reactors can require a small amount of uranium-233 to start up, but once started up they no longer require uranium (hey, easy way to dispose of old nuclear bombs!). In addition, the buildup of fissile material is not only able to be managed through design changes in the LFTR, they have a much shorter half-life.
-LFTR reactors are extremely melt-down resistant.
<a href="http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/AmSci_LFTR.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >http://www.energyfromthorium.com/pdf/AmSci_LFTR.pdf</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY</a>http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d2098deab8eaca4400001achristophersiessWed, 19 Dec 2012 13:38:05 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d2098deab8eaca4400001a
Very good observation! LFTR reactors are drastically different than standard reactors.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d2091a69beddb41000000echristophersiessWed, 19 Dec 2012 13:36:10 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d2091a69beddb41000000e
It may very well be prudent for the United States to wait a few years before going into thorium. Seeing thorium sink or swim in Norway, China and India can easily sway the right people in the right direction. Seeing how the building of the plant is done, the infrastructure is set up and the secondary innovations that spring up can prep the USA.
And seeing how America is becoming a second-rate innovator in a vital field will harm investment in this country, one way or the other.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1f72469bedd9260000014Robert LarsonWed, 19 Dec 2012 12:19:32 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1f72469bedd9260000014
If you're inclined to take thorium seriously you owe it to yourself to check out this fact sheet:
www.ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thorium2009factsheet.pdf
- the technology is still experimental after 60+ years of nuclear energy -- they're TESTING it now
- it's a fuel breeder scheme, involving a lot messy reprocessing = lots of nuclear waste
- it's still a nuke, capable of rendering a large chunk of the earth uninhabitable forever.
The best kind of energy is nuclear, and the safest place for the reactor is 93 million miles away.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e983eab8ea0e03000002Natural gas is overratedWed, 19 Dec 2012 11:21:23 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e983eab8ea0e03000002
The flow rate in fracked gas wells declines rapidly with time. Much more so that oil wells.
Huge amounts of expensive drilling are required just to keep production up.http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e57669bedd143800000bRobert HargravesWed, 19 Dec 2012 11:04:06 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e57669bedd143800000b
The high costs of $4 to $10 per watt of generation capacity are for conventional nuclear power plants that may burn uranium and thorium. The breakthrough technology is the fluid fuel form of the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, which has the potential to allow capital costs to drop to $2 per watt. This can produce energy cheaper than coal or natural gas (at predicted future prices). THORIUM: energy cheaper than coal is a new book that presents the idea the only energy cheaper than coal can persuade developing nations not to burn coal for electricity. It's described at <a href="http://www.thoriumenergycheaperthancoal.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" >http://www.thoriumenergycheaperthancoal.com</a>http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e52deab8ea5377000001astrobullishWed, 19 Dec 2012 11:02:53 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1e52deab8ea5377000001
"$5/million cubic feet through 2022."
sure buddy, the producers can't drill wells for $5, but it's going to fight through decline curves, inflation and stay single digits for the next decade - horriblehttp://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1d1426bb3f7597f000016Words MatterWed, 19 Dec 2012 09:37:54 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1d1426bb3f7597f000016
Last week Norway joined India, China, and others in tersting thorium, regarded by some as the energy source of the future"
"tersting"?http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1d00eeab8eadc45000007History LessonWed, 19 Dec 2012 09:32:46 -0500http://www.businessinsider.com/c/50d1d00eeab8eadc45000007
preconditions are necessary for thorium to thrive:
1. Can you kill something with it?
-end